EVANSVILLE – Months after FBI agents began investigating the Pigeon Township Trustee’s Office for alleged financial crimes, the U.S. Department of Justice announced it had secured indictments against three unnamed local officials.
In a news release published Tuesday afternoon, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Indiana Zach Myers said the indictments followed “a public corruptions investigation related to township government in Southwest Indiana.”
In the hours after Myers’ announcement, Evansville police descended on the Pigeon Township Trustee’s Office, and officers appeared outside the home of Mariama Wilson, the Pigeon Township Trustee.
Evansville police detained a man outside the township’s Eighth Street offices just after 5 p.m. Tuesday, and at least three officers could be seen posted outside Wilson’s home Tuesday afternoon.
No one connected to the Pigeon Township Trustee’s Office appeared in Vanderburgh County jail booking records as of Wednesday morning.
Myers was expected to hold a news conference Wednesday afternoon to discuss the investigation and pending indictments.
“This investigation and prosecution demonstrate our ongoing commitment to combating public corruption and defending tax dollars,” Myers said Tuesday afternoon. “Public employment is a public trust, and the charges we plan to announce reiterates that those who violate that trust will be held accountable.”
Pigeon Township includes all of Evansville’s inner city. Like other township governments, it provides services to area residents, many of them low-income, such as help paying bills or finding housing.
The FBI, alongside the Indiana State Board of Accounts and Evansville Police Department detectives, collected financial records and interviewed Pigeon Township Trustee’s Office staff in July 2022.
At the time, investigators said their inquiry centered around alleged “spending irregularities.”
In response to the initial FBI probe, Ryan Hatfield, who serves as an attorney for the Pigeon Township Trustee’s Office, said Wilson had “nothing to hide.”
“We anticipate authorities will find no wrongdoing,” he said in July.
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